30

SHOW AND TELL

SEX SCANDALS can be
a bonanza for magazines,
especially when they involve
a politician above suspicion.
When Eliot Spitzer, the cru-
sading governor of New York, was caught patronizing call
girls in 2008, I quickly solicited sketches. I liked what I saw
as Peter de Sève’s funny, if harsh, proposal for an appropriate
punishment (above). But when I called to ask him to move
the guillotine lower to better make his point, he demurred,
explaining he had only meant his image to read as “off with
his head.” We had many other sketches and chose Mark
Ulriksen’s (right): the disrobing of a straight-arrow politician
brought low by his lust.

KNOWN FOR HER CLEVER use of words, Barbara
Kruger is one of the few art world superstars who occa-
sionally does magazine covers (above). For an Art Issue of
W, Kruger used “cover lines” as censor bars, allowing the
magazine to display a celebrity in full frontal nudity. Cover
lines can explain the image or dress up its intent, but they
are not available for The New Yorker, where images have to
stand alone; Bob Zoell’s play on words for college gradu-
ates (right) might have worked inside the magazine with a
caption. Still, we are not above running an occasional sexy
image: Istvan Banyai’s cover (opposite) used tight cropping
to celebrate a rite of spring.